Knocking Jesus out of Christmas

I was in that place between sleep and awake, listening to a strange noise coming from the living room. Clickity, click, clack, swoosh, clack, clack, click, swoosh. What was it? The bed was warm and so cozy and I could tell the temperature had dropped during the night. This meant that the tile was going to be icy cold. Did I really want to get up and check on this noise? I knew it was probably one of my cats, but what I didn't know was if what they were doing to produce this unusual noise was potentially dangerous. So I peeled off the comforting blankets and went to investigate.

At first I couldn't tell what was happening, but as I drew closer to the noise I could see Eeny Meeny swatting something around on the tile. He was truly enjoying himself and was not the least bit sorry that he had disturbed my dreams. "Eeny Meeny what do you have there?" On closer inspection I could see that the object of his frenzied play was Baby Jesus. He had somehow removed Baby Jesus from the manger in my Advent Wreath which sat on the coffee table and was knocking him all over the living room. I picked up Baby Jesus and returned him to the wreath.

Throughout the day I thought of what Eeny Meeny had done and of how it paralleled with what we have done to a certain extent with our Christmas observance. Christmas was originated to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but so many other things have been introduced and taken precedence on this special day,that Jesus keeps getting knocked out of his own birthday celebration. I'm grateful for the ways God speaks to me to help me get back on course when my thinking veers off course. Once again he spoke to me through a funny little cat named Eeny Meeny......................Shalom, Bebe